Linguistics
by LucinaNemain
Summary: Drabble, a long one. The Cohens studying Ryan, the language.


This is a whad'yacall'em..? drabble? As in not really a story as such more like a.. yeah drabble. And yes, I'm babbling, but it's like in the middle of the night, so at least by myself I'm forgiven.

So anyway, I kind of apologize for this drabble because it's kind of long even though nothing really happens, and I also realized it might be kind of boring. And it's amazing how much I seem to like the expression "kind of." To finish this paragraph in the same spirit; it's also kind of not beta'd, so there are probably zillions of mistakes.

Finished apologizing, I'll start explaining myself. I've been suffering from a severe writer's block the past month or so, and when I finally started writing stuff again and I thought thatfreakin block had disappeared, but I found it had only been upgraded to a poster's(?) block. Which means I just haven't been able to make mysef post anything, for different reasons; all equally silly. So this is me, trying to force my way around that stupid block, posting this thing when I'm not even sure I like it (though I think I do..). I hope that this plan of mine works out; and that I'll find myself more up to post some the stories brewing in my mind.

So anyway, enjoy. If you feel like it. You don't have to.

And I don't own the characters, or the languages for that matter. But I do own the term "ryeme." But feel free to borrow it if you need it, though I doubt anybody would want to.

/ A very tired LN

* * *

LINGUISTICS

"How did you _do_ that?"

Kirsten turned to Seth, while Sandy stood looking at the door through which Ryan had left.

"Seth, how did you know that's what he meant?"

She had thought about it several times during the past months; how Seth seemed to understand Ryan better than anybody else. But lately it had been almost scary, the way they seemed to read each other's minds.

With Ryan this was no big surprise, Kirsten had realized a long time ago that he was good at reading people. Finding out what they thought, not only what they said. But Seth had never seemed to even know there was sometimes a hidden message. Until Ryan came along.

She had never thought to ask about it before; she'd just assumed it was some brother thing. But today she was just too astonished to let it go.

"It's easy Mom, once you know the language of Ryan."

Seth smirked, somewhat patronizing, at his parents.

"And you know that?"

"Yeah. I do."

"Just like that?" Sandy chimed in.

Seth's smirk disappeared. Suddenly he was all serious, and his voice was earnest when he responded.

"No, it's taken a lot of work. Lots of studying."

Seth's parents, both a little surprised by this sudden seriousness, turned to look at each other. And they both knew they had the same idea, and they both realized they knew what Seth meant. They knew they now spoke each other fluently, but remembered it hadn't always been easy.

Kirsten nodded at Sandy, and Sandy was for once aware of the fact that he knew what she meant.

"Your mother and I were thinking.." he started, and thought about how many times he'd said things like that without realizing how amazing it was he actually _knew_ what she was thinking. "That maybe you could teach us a bit of Ryan?"

Seth's eyes flew back and forth between his parents, both looking at him expectantly.

"Dad, studying Ryan the language equals studying Ryan the person. You can't learn Ryan without spending lots of time with the actual Ryan."

"I know, we realize that. And of course we intend to do all of the hard work ourselves. But since you already speak it fluently we thought you could give us some advice. On how to approach the.. subject."

Seth, eyes gleaming with delight of the thought of teaching his parents something (something they actually wanted to know and not just random factoids), thought about it for a moment. As if he actually considered turning down an opportunity to be condescending to his parents.

"Sure, why not." he finally said. "Even though I, contrary to what you think, by no means consider myself speaking Ryan fluently, I will consent to give you n00bs some tips. Let me introduce to you something I'd like to call; 'Ryan for dummies!' What do you think about that?"

"Awesome." his father stated, and his mother nodded in agreement.

"Awesome." Seth echoed. "So when do you want your first lesson?"

Again Kirsten and Sandy looked at each other. This; being aware of _how_ they understood each other, could add a whole new dimension to their relationship, they realized. Now they could add naughty subtext to the already naughty subtext to their not always so non-naughty normal language. Truly awesome. But they decided to spare Seth from this realization and just asked him;

"How about right now? Or do you have anywhere to be?"

Seth looked a bit taken aback for a moment, but shrugged and recomposed himself.

"No. No, I don't. So right now is perfect. How about we move into the den?"

The three of them rose, and after much organizing and supervising from Seth and running for snacks ("You'll need your sugar, students.") and writing utilities ("I'll expect a 1000-word essay in the morning, you need to take notes..") from his parents, they were gathered in the den and their first lesson could start.

"So, parents/students.. I'll start by defining the concept of Ryan. Not the person that is, because I'd say he's already pretty well defined. You know; blond hair, likes to punch people, lives in the pool house. I think we all know what we're talking about."

Taking a deep breath, Seth continued.

"The other Ryan on the other hand.. is not really a language. It's what's called an idiolect, which is kind of a dialect, only the dialect is tied to geographical area whereas the idiolect is tied to one specific person. It is, in short, his or hers unique speech style."

After this rant, Seth found his parents staring at him, mouths agape. He knew they hadn't expected him to actually have taken this seriously. He smiled, somewhat embarrassed, and explained himself with a shrug and a quiet statement.

"The internet.."

After a brief pause, he continued.

"Yeah, a while ago when I decided I'd take studying Ryan seriously, I googled around a bit and found some stuff that was actually kind of cool. So let's continue. Thing is, even though Ryan is only a dialect, or rather an idiolect, we can still refer to it as a language, because those in the know, them linguists you know, states that from a purely linguistic point of view there is no difference between a dialect/idiolect and a language. It's all politics."

Seth turned mock serious, raising his voice slightly and straightening his back.

"This, grasshoppers, I want you to write down. I quote: 'A language is a dialect with a fleet and an army and a hell of a lot of guns, and probably some bandwagons and at least one bazooka.'"

"That was a quote?" Kirsten asked, sceptically.

"Well, yeah. The first part at least. I might have added some bandwagons and bazookas, but I'm pretty sure the fleet and the army was there to start with. Sorry about that, I got a little carried away. The point is, however, that those with power get to decide what counts as a real language."

Smiling sweetly at Kirsten, he said;

"And as you're Caleb Nichol's daughter and probably the second most powerful person in Newport I think you can decide that Ryan is, indeed, a language. Unless of course Grandpa disagrees and declares war and somehow wins. But he wouldn't do that, because he couldn't care less."

He nodded to himself, satisfied to have reached some kind of conclusion.

"Where was I? Right. I was just coming to the good part. As you know- No wait a second! I'm not sure you do, actually. Well aren't you lucky I'm here to enlighten you?"

Sensing that he might have tugged at his parent's patience a little too enthusiastically, he returned to the subject.

"So, as you might or might not know, any human language consists of words. Those are built up by things they want to call phonemes, but as far as I understand that's only another word for sound. Or more specifically, speech sounds. And this is where the good part starts; the part where _I_ started doing the thinking."

He threw a glance at his parents, and seeing they were not (yet) asleep, kept going.

"I thought like this; phonemes.. equals.. sound. But Ryan, the person that is, is not very eh.. verbal. He doesn't make a lot of sound. So I thought: 'Sign language!' They don't make a lot of sound either. And wasn't I right? The deaf have their own kind of phonemes, only they are called visemes. As in visual, as opposed to phono; sound? You get how smart these guys are?"

He nodded to himself. With a wave of his hand he encouraged his parents to join in the nodding. He didn't continue until they were both nodding in agreement of how smart these guys were.

"And yet not as smart as I am." he then stated matter-of-factly.

His parents continued their nodding; it seemed like the best way to keep him going.

"Because I soon realized the visemes were not what I was looking for. You see, another thing we humans do when we invent our languages, even the non-verbal ones, is that we include this little thing called duality of patterning. It basically means the phonemes or visemes doesn't mean anything by themselves; only if you combine them to get words. Duality; two levels.. You get it, don't you? I knew I got my brains from somewhere."

"And what has this to do with visemes not being what you looked for?" Kirsten asked.

"Well you see, the thing with Ryan the person is that his language isn't built by things you _see_ exclusively. It also holds a part of pre-determination as well as some actual involvement by sound, believe it or not. But this I'll save for later; let me first digress for a second."

He ignored his parents' barely concealed sighs.

"Looked upon by an eye less sharp than mine, Ryan the language might hold several similarities with animal language. Those are namely not formed by the earlier mentioned duality of patterning. Realizing much of Ryan the language is linked to the body language of Ryan the person, one easily makes the assumption that one kind of movement or posture stands for one specific emotion or thought. Much like in animal language, because they _do_ talk. Just not like us."

"Are you saying that Ryan speaks like an animal?"

"Eh, no. I was just coming to that. The thing is that animals do have languages, but those are not built like human ones; where smaller pieces of non-meaningful entities combine to build larger entities, and some of those combinations bear meaning. Animals have only one layer, one sound bears one meaning. Am I making any sense?"

"Believe it or not son; yes. You are. Go on."

"So, for a while there I feared we actually let a beast into our pool house, but I was quickly set straight by a very intelligent thought that decided to enter my brain. Which was this; I needed a new eme."

"A new.. eme?"

"Yes! So I invented the ryeme."

"The.. ry.. eme?"

"Yes! And there is no need to sound so sceptical; it's brilliant dammit, brilliant! See, I figured the way you understand what Ryan is actually saying when he says something is a combination of visemes and phonemes and that third part I'm coming to later. When looked upon separately, the audio part of his speech is a dual layer system, and the visible part of it is one layer, so quite contrary to my initial fears we have a creature with a linguistic capability of at least three layers in the pool house. And that, my friends – parents actually – is _many_ layers. Any normal human language has only two."

"Okay, but.. ryeme?"

"I needed a name for all those things that build each entity in the language of Ryan, okay? Believe me, I had many suggestions, none of which were very good and I ended up calling them ryemes. I know they should be called sethemes, as it was I who discovered them, but I feel generous. Ryan can share my limelight. Besides, he was my muse, I owe him something, and this way he'll have no claim on the prize money when I win the Nobel Prize in linguistics."

He paused to actually take a breath.

"Now, students, we'll enter the land of AP Ryan. Are you ready for this? This is the hard part, so feel free to, you know, bail."

His parents seemed to believe they were in fact ready for this, and since ending the class would mean he'd have to stop talking, or at least expecting anybody to listen to him talking, he carried on without actually giving them a chance to bail.

"Now we'll discuss the three different ryemes of Ryan the language. The first two you should be familiar with. Number One; _audible_ ryemes. The things he actually says, and the way he says them. Number Two; _visual_ ryemes. His body language. And last but not least: Number Three; the _hidden_ ryemes."

Starting to pace – he couldn't believe he'd forgotten to pace; pacing is a part of being a teacher – he looked at his parents.

"The audible ryemes are divided into two different groups; words and voice. Words are just words, nothing more to add. Voice on the other hand, includes all those other things you hear, like stuttering, tone of voice, hesitations. Those are more subtle, but oh so important, and closely connected to hidden ryemes, as you will see when I get to those."

Being tired of pacing he sat down again.

"The visible ryemes are a bit tricky, because he's very much in control of his body. He hardly ever tenses up, and if he does one can be sure it's intentional. One thing I've noticed though is that when confronted with something, he'll relax. I think it is something he forces himself to do in order to keep from tensing up, and he ends up overcompensating and seemingly be more relaxed than normally."

Being unable to sit still he bounced up again, but didn't start pacing. Instead, he gesticulated wildly.

"The hidden ryemes are limited. They are fundamental facts about Ryan the person and how he works. I have a list of three hidden ryemes so far, but I'm sure there are more just waiting to be discovered. So here follow the hidden ryemes; the very core of the study of Ryan."

Sandy and Kirsten could tell this was the important part and sat up straight. Seth held up one finger in the air.

"One." he said. "Ryan _always_ wants to make things all right."

Shaking his finger to really enforce the seriousness of this statement he continued.

"If things by chance are not all right, he'll think it's his fault. When trying to decipher what he's saying, always assume there's a hidden message with which he's either trying to make things alright or apologizing that they aren't."

Folding out his second finger to keep the fist one company, he went on.

"Two. Ryan _can_ be funny. If the first hidden ryeme doesn't make any sense when put together with the audible and visual ones, this is the hidden ryeme in action."

And finally Seth's third finger came lose.

"Three. And this is the sad part." Sandy and Kirsten recognized the true seriousness from earlier, and tensed up with anticipation. "In his own eyes, Ryan's pointless."

Seth looked into the eyes of first his mother, then his father. This was the fundamental part that they hadn't yet grasped and therefore needed this lesson in the language of Ryan. They all knew this was what the whole lecture had been leading up to.

"This, I think, will be hard for you to understand, because as far as I know you've never felt like that. You have always held meaning to somebody. Me too, for that matter, and I can tell you I had trouble understanding this in the beginning. Actually, I still don't understand it completely, but intellectually I can understand how it will affect Ryan and his reactions."

Seth sat down again.

"The most important part in learning Ryan is this; to get into our heads that his mind works differently when it comes to that. And to recognize the times he misunderstands what we say because he just can't understand our reality, the one in which he means something."

"But he just can't think that, I mean he has to realize how much he means to us." Kirsten said, almost pleadingly.

"No, that's the thing. You take for granted things that make you misunderstand each other. You can't understand his reality, where he means nothing to anybody, but you have to be aware of it."

Sandy watched his son with a new respect. He hadn't known Seth was this mature. He wondered what else he'd underestimated when it came to his son.

"But we can't let him think that, we have to tell him – once and for all – how much he means to us, how important he is."

Seth shook his head.

"It won't help. Or I mean, it will, but it won't fix it. Because he won't understand it, not really. He's not yet fluent in Cohen, see."

"But there must be something we can do to make him feel more important." Kirsten stated, almost angrily.

"I'm working on it, believe me. And so are you. We'll just have to remind him every time we notice behaviour that indicates ryeme number three is in action. And being aware of this infamous ryeme will actually help you to notice those occasions. At least it helped me."

They all sat silent for a few minutes, pondering what had been said.

Suddenly Seth's good old teacher manners were back, and the tension in the air disappeared.

"Very well done, my disciples. I'll expect you essay no later than eight tomorrow night. Lesson two will divulge to you the mysteries of the semantics of Ryan, how different categories blend into each other for the benefit of phonology and right about there I stopped having any idea at all what I was talking about."

Kirsten and Sandy rose from the couch. They'd learned stuff, for sure. Things about Ryan to think about, definitely.

"Seth, thank you." Kirsten said, earnestly.

"Always glad to enlighten the masses." Seth smirked.

Sandy patted him on the back, and the parents left the room. Seth went to find Ryan (the person) to try to lure him out of the swamp of his school books and into the rainbowy emerald hills in the garden of PlayStation.

Sandy and Kirsten shared a look, and knew exactly where they were headed. Not that they weren't concerned about Ryan, but they'd left their lesson with hope and felt the serious discussions could wait till morning.

They hadn't really been bored by Seth's lengthy descriptions and digresses, they'd rather enjoyed themselves. The better part of the lesson they'd spent sending sub-subtext messages to each other, and true to form those had been naughty.

They'd done all but ripping each other's clothes off right in front of Seth, and he hadn't noticed. It gave them both a sense of freedom, and out of sight from Seth they raced each other to their bedroom.

They'd learned more than one thing today.


End file.
